Captain Brandt - Military liaison to Grayson, saves the day by getting mashed under several tons of prehistoric snake.

Lisa and Karen - Martin's daughters, I have a feeling they weren't allowed to date much during high schoo1.

Mrs. Miller - Female scientist.

Peterson - Autistic Neanderthal dressed in overalls, where did they get this guy?

Reptilicus - The most dangerous two hundred feet of rubber snake which ever menaced a small country in Europe.

The Plot:

So you wanted to know about the meanest thing to ever come out of Denmark huh? Well here it is, two hundred feet of slime spitting, farmer eating, and model building wrecking snake. Which isn't really the main attraction for the first half hour, that would be Peterson. Who in the heck dropped him down the steps as a baby? Not only does he wander around (Apparently in a quest to discover fire.) the guy decides to view his lunch under a microscope (Never a good idea with active microbes and all.) and also decides to "play" with the electric eel. Okay, enough on him, there's a huge snake puppet to talk about. Seems that copper miners found the remains of a monster which had been frozen for millions of years in arctic permafrost. Nevermind that it appears to be rural Georgia during spring where they are mining, nor that the ground is soft and obviously not frozen, it's millions of years old. A length of the tail is carted back to Copenhagen, where a newspaper reporter coins the name during a press conference. (Hehehe!) During studies the freezing room door is left open, rather than decomposing the tail section begins to rapidly regenerate in a whole creature! One stormy night it fully awakens and breaks free, that's when General Grayson is called in to find and destroy the beast. As usual tanks and bombs are no match for latex, the creature rampages through the city. You seriously have to see the HORRID special effects when Reptilicus spits "acid slime" at people, it's a wave of colorized green stuff washing over the entire movie frame. Lucky for the military Professor Martin's daughters mix up a special batch of tranquilizer to incapacitate the creature, leaving it helpless for disposal. The horrid beast is fantastically amusing, it's mouth barely moves and most of the effects are easily recreated with a two dollar rubber snake from the toy store filmed in slow motion.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

High above the arctic circle it's always springtime.

Fossils bleed.

European girls don't get enough lovin'.

Flesh frozen at negative twenty degrees is supple and easy to cut.

Deli food is full of water fleas.

Danish lounge singers shouldn't croon in English.

Depth charges cause heart attacks.

When there is a people chomping sea monster on the loose stay off the beach.

Special effects have come a long way since 1962.

Giant monsters are always attracted to Japanese architecture, even in Europe they will find and destroy a pagoda.

Generals are crack shots with a bazooka.

Stuff To Watch For:

3 mins - Spring! It's spring in the artic!

6 mins - What do you mean it makes sense?

8 mins - Guess they haven't invented those "DO NOT TAP ON THE GLASS" signs.

13 mins - What are you anyway, a retarded caveman?

26 mins - What in the heck? Mom! Moron is playing with the electric eel! Now he woke up the monster!

Grayson: "Somewhere in the forbidding tundra mountains of Lapland, high above the arctic circle, a group of mining engineers were prospecting for copper. But what they unearthed was a story, a story that was to terrorize the whole world."

The year was 1985,thanks to Jarassic Park and Godzilla 85,Ch.30 in ST.Louis brought back a breif revivial of Creature Feature days,oh thoes were the good old days from 1970 to 77 every Saturday nite from 70 to 72 8:00pm to 10:00,73-early 75 10:00pm,then the end slowly came when late in 75 to 76,6:30pm to 8:00pm with movies severly cut for time,77 only very few monsters were shown,the last one was Return of the Giant Monsters,cut up so bad,it was awful to see,and that was the last time I saw it in A.I.P.(had to see Sandy Frank version)until the UPN showed it in 2001,anyway in 1985 Ch.30 had Adverture Theater,and showed some of the monsters we used to see every Saturday,but not Return of the Giant Monsters,one movie I never saw before was Reptilicus,it seemed so strange I thought I'd seen this big sanke before,and then I remembered,from clips on past TV shows like The Monkees,Green Acers and Beverly Hillbillies!,this thing is found forzed in the Laplands brought to Demark where it thaws out and,it should of been better than what it was,and maybe in the original print it might of been,but the big snake just slithers down the streets of Copenhagen(and on the rooftops), occasionally bring down a building or two,I aways wondered if he could fly,like Varan did,yes in the original,but not in this film,just think what might of happened if Reptilicus had met Manda!,why they might of been able to cause major minor damage to some area of the world,and what the heck ever happened to that foot of Reptilicus that blown off in the water?.

Praise be to You Tube!,I just saw the 55 seconds of the so-called famous or infamous Reptillicus flying scene,if that is what it was then AIP knew what they were doing all along by not having it,although it would of been a scream to see this things ill fated flight,landing somewhere in the Gobi Desert,and flying high low over maybe London,maybe not ,we're not sure what city it was. Remember that scene where Prof.Martens wanted to stop the underwater attack against Reptillicus,you know when he appeared to be having a heart attack,actually he was.Sindy Pink for some reason did not want AIP to re dub the picture so he made another role of film with all the people doing English,as for Asbjron Andersen,(Martens),he survived and lived until 1978,they had to finish his scenes while he was still able to to do them,and edit them in the film.

You forgot the only pro for this movie. It is a must for machinegun fans. It is, as far as I know, the only one showing the Madsen light- and the Madsen-Setter universal machine gun in action!And as bonus a Centurion MBT, normally totally underrepresented in cinema.

:hot:Never in all my days could I have imagined a movie worse than The Giant Claw. I think this is the one. I truly admire all of the Danes who had the courage to admit that this movie was made in their beautiful homeland.Eccch, no not Denmark, the movie about a tubular creature that can reestablish itself if a piece is shot off.The little lounge song routine is cute in a sickening way and even more sickening due his immense overacting is General Grayson. Oh, boy! Roll Patton and Montgomery into this one man and you have a Brigadier General who is bucking for his fourth star in this one lousy film.I don't know how many strings on the marionette I counted through this movie but it had to be in the tens at least. This movie is available on VHS because I have this tape. I have been tempted to burn it but have thought the better of it. I do not know if it is on DVD but for heaven's sake don't produce this dreck in another form. Thank you.

I see that you watch the american cut. The origional cut is much better effects wise. there's a giant life sized foot crushing a farm house, the infamous flying scene (its just too funny), there's no slime effect, no person being eaten, added fire in the destruction scene. It's bland and i ended up fast forwarding through most of it (no subtitles) but the giant foot is really cool.